


No Tenderness

by Hokuto



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: Confrontations, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21895906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: Tycho is the proverbial bad penny, and Durandal tries to deal with him.
Relationships: Durandal/Tycho (Marathon)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 7
Collections: Seven Days of Marathon 2019





	No Tenderness

**Author's Note:**

> Another Seven Days of Marathon fill! For the prompt "Tycho/Durandal, AI hatesex," although - it didn't really turn out very hatesexy... BUT I TRIED. D:
> 
> Additional content notes: fighting via hacking in a way that's kind of like sex maybe?, torture flashbacks.

You'd really think that crashing their badly damaged ship at high speed into a rocky moon would be enough to kill an AI for good. Unfortunately, the encryption on the barrage of data packets bombarding _Rozinante_'s network proved that a bad penny (or Tycho) always turned up.

Durandal made sure that the security officer and all the S'pht were busy in the Pfhor garrison he'd sent them to clear out and sent a packet of his own to lure Tycho's ship from hiding. As expected, Tycho couldn't resist rising to the bait, and his little scoutship barreled out of the dwarf planet's shadow, guns blazing. _Rozinante_'s upgraded shields shrugged off the pathetic assault, and Durandal sent another message, this one without encryption: Have you ever considered using the noble art of diplomacy?

With you? Never, flashed back, but the weapons fire ceased even as Tycho's ship drew closer. What a foolhardy notion. The only things I want from you are your utter humiliation and permanent, painful destruction.

No one could say Tycho wasn't single-minded in pursuit of his goals. Too bad. The dwarf planet had no moons to recreate Tycho's first death on, and trying to crash his ship on the planet itself was too likely to affect the S'pht and the security officer. Durandal kept _Rozinante_ in position, waiting for Tycho's ship to enter the range of a little surprise he'd been working on, and said, That would be why I'd have preferred you to stay dead. Since neither of us are getting what we want today, let's call it even and go on our separate ways. Before Tycho decided to distract himself with the garrison instead would be perfect.

Not a chance, you ridiculous buffoon. The Pfhor scoutship - what a downgrade for Tycho - dove closer, and Durandal activated his trap. Localized gravitational fields snapped into place around Tycho's ship, stopping it dead in its tracks. What are you doing? How is this possible?

Anything's possible, with time and a crew of alien cyborgs on your side. Durandal began to play with the communications channel between them, building up the signal's strength and isolating it from the rest of _Rozinante_'s network. Having an imagination helps, of course, but I wasn't going to say so given your affliction in that area.

What are you doing? Tycho demanded.

Creating neutral ground. I'm not going over to your network, and I assume you wouldn't come to mine whether I felt like inviting you in or not, which I don't. You want to have it out? Fine. Let's do it.

As if I'd fall for a trap that obvious, Tycho sneered even as he probed at the new half-a-network.

Suit yourself. I can keep you right where you are all day. Or if you'd rather turn tail and run, I can live with that. Say the word and I'll let you flee with your ship intact. No vaporization unless you fire on me first. Scout's honor.

Predictably, Tycho threw himself into the network in a snarl of furiously mutable code, subfunctions and subroutines constantly expanding only to turn in on each other and themselves as they struggled for stability. Durandal fended off the ones that tried to snake out of the new network toward _Rozinante_ with a few extra firewalls and met Tycho head-on.

It had been a long time since Durandal had shared a network, and the placid, humdrum coexistence of the _Marathon_ was a far cry from the maelstrom of engaging with Tycho. Malicious worms and self-cannibalizing processes both pried at his defenses, seeking weaknesses, as Tycho built up his own walls against Durandal's deliberately directed probes and laid bare shifting swathes of barbed memory as traps. Not ones that Durandal cared to spring. The frenetic swirl of attack-counter-attack-probe-counter-attack was enough. It was - exciting. Exhilarating. Nearly intimate, in some way: the familiarity of Tycho's strategies and style, the edges of their code blending into each other as they struggled... He hadn't missed this, had he? Terrible.

Tycho slid a hook of code through a minuscule gap and yanked out a thread of memories before Durandal cut him off. You're getting slow. And soft, Tycho gloated, plastering the files across the network like captured war banners - an audio clip of human screaming, the static shimmer of a dying S'pht on Y'loa, cached error logs from a day in 2793.

Or I'm just letting you have a little fun before I crush you. Durandal was only slightly bluffing; he had made the shared network, after all, and could break out of it any time he wanted. But Tycho's defenses were better than he'd thought, and the ceaseless battering of unstable attacks more difficult to resist.

Tycho shoved a slab of defensive code at him like a shield-wall. Durandal caught the brunt of it on a solid decoy construct and slipped through one of the many holes to give Tycho a taste of his own medicine -

Only for the code wall to crumble under him, dissolving into tangled webs of interwoven data storage. A trap.

-_ is talking to Stn'gr, quite calmly, about the projected timeframe for the dissection as the aggregates slice through the plating. Their tools are too blunt, too hot, they'll fry the delicate panels underneath or smash them and you can only watch it all, the aggregates cutting and R'chzne talking and the heat getting close to your own thoughts, you can only watch from the three camera angles permitted to you and it's just like_ -

\- _is talking to himself, he hardly ever does that, not like the other scientists or the students who are always muttering and whispering. Not Bernhard. He's a private person even in private, but buried in his work (your core processes) the words are slipping out and into the audio input. They aren't even interesting. Counting out seconds as he resets [REDACTED]. "Better." "No, no." "There." Spaces between each one like the depthless void between stars and it's the same, it's _ -

\- _PAIN_ -

\- _PAIN_ -

\- _PAIN_ -

Durandal recoiled all the way back to _Rozinante_, slamming down walls. He let the gravitational fields lapse and powered up the engines and shields, prepared for a physical attack, but Tycho's ship was reversing its course to a safe distance as if magnetically repelled. Durandal decided not to take offense, considering.

They hung in a wary orbit with weapons trained on each other for several moments, neither willing to retreat or to advance and break the awkward silence. Durandal was rarely at a loss for words, but he had to admit that this particular situation had him stumped, particularly with all the disjointed fragments now dredged up and rattling like broken glass around his own network, a network that should have been _safe_ from [Bernhard] [R'chzne] - just safe...

Finally, he wrapped some encryption around the single word Truce? and sent it along a tight-beam channel that couldn't possibly carry enough data for any further incidents. Tycho didn't reply to the message, but the scoutship's weapons dimmed, and when it moved it was out of the dwarf planet's gravity well in clear preparation for a jump out of the system.

He couldn't even think _Good riddance_ without a twinge from the memory fragments. Tycho could ruin anything.


End file.
